RE: LPAR issue

Joe,

You can share resources between partitions.  Remembering that an LPAR is
an instance of an AS/400 system, it makes sense that you can't share
your system ASP, but you probably could share a Switchable ASP.  Sharing
is determined by the IOP, which can be moved from one partition to
another.  At no time would it available to both partitions at the same
time.

With expensive high-speed tape drives, there is some savings.  If you
had three RAID controllers in a single enclosure, you could use one for
each of three partitions, rather than purchasing three enclosures.  I
think that you could do Ethernet cards, but why would you want to?  It
would be possible to configure a system to share optical drives, but
generally each partition is configured with one so that you could do a
system load.  This may be a requirement.

One thing to remember is that the individual cards are not shared, the
I/O processors which control the cards are.  So it might be necessary to
have a few more IOPs than you would on a single-partition system.

The above is simplistic, applies mainly to OS/400 partitions, but I
think that it addresses your question.

Regards,
Andy

> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
[mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]
> On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
> Sent: Friday, July 12, 2002 11:15 AM
> To: midrange-l@midrange.com
> Subject: LPAR issue
>
> Hey Al (and anyone else who has an opinion <grin>)!
>
> I've been advised that within an LPAR'd system the partitions don't
> necessarily work and play with one another.  For example, you cannot
share
> tape drives or optical drives.  You cannot share Ethernet cards.
> Different
> partitions must have their own RAID arrays.
>
> If someone is trying to use an LPAR to reduce the cost of having
multiple
> iSeries boxes, it seems that duplication of hardware like this could
be a
> significant cost.  I'd much rather be able to "pool" my hardware
resources
> like I can on any decent Microsoft network and share them among my
> partitions.
>
> Is my information correct, and if so, is my opinion misguided?  (Well,
> more
> misguided than usual?)
>
> Joe
>
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